


The Man of Twists and Turns

by archea2



Series: Old Tales Twice Told [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Classics, Crossover, M/M, Odyssey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-26 00:52:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is Ulysses. John is Penelope. The rest of the crew volunteered happily enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man of Twists and Turns

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written before S2, when we were all happily toying with waterfalls and opera singer!Irene. I've tried to trim it into a more canon-friendly shape, but it felt more artificial, and in the end I've left it as it was.

The sound of water will be his tune for the next thirty months, the rippling, the rock-ripping. He, who never selected one for his phone ( _childish),_ will hear it constantly - death in full cry, sealing Moriarty's fate and his own survival.

It mingles into the night train's roar as he crosses from Switzerland to Serbia under the nondescript name Anthea swiftly provided for him. He's a nobody now _(if they find no body, will you),_ and as he gazes at the endless vista of wheat fields, ashen blond under the moon, he feels something new stir in his chest. Hunger-like.

* * *

_Stay with me_ , Mummie whispers, standing regal and faded on the threshold of his old room. The old room is slatted with day and shadow, bringing back memories of tormented naps, dreams of London, dreams of escape while the tidal roar of traffic only came as a lull against the shutters, and the struggle to keep his eyes open in the cool dark grotto became heavier every second.

And yes, he could stay here this time, and let her gather him in her arms, turn him back into a child. If anyone can shut the roar out and quiet the storms in his brain...But no.

 _I have to go_ , he tells her, as he did once before, and Mummie weeps new salty tears, but then she takes a step back. 

 _Go back to John_ , he explains, and as his lungs hit the sweet-sharp J, he can feel how it cracks the dark chamber open and burns all the shadows and the day into a sun. The night train rocks him harder, curve after curve, but Sherlock holds onto his sun.

He will go back.

* * *

He sits down with the Golem in an underground Army bunker, unrecognized, pouring out rose-red wine and enticing Cyrillic. Looking up at the giant, he recalls the Jewish legend which he once told John near a river  _(roaring roaring are you furious at me)._ What he never told John was how the story ends.

When the Golem raises his glass in a toast, he raises John's gun and sends one round hole in the center of the creature's forehead.

Then he commits the names he was given to memory and retraces his steps to Austria. So many names. So many orphan tales _(do you update your blog)._ Anthea texts him instructions, and another train takes him to Vienna, where one of the names is waiting for him.

Perhaps there will be a story to tell John in the end.

Perhaps not. 

 

* * *

That woman is a hybrid. Boyish, wanton; a two-legged cat under her white face and red lips; with a voice that will move the angels in your loins, they say, and give your soul a hard-on to remember. In her lodge at the Vienna National Opera, he shows her a photograph and she does what any cat does when you point out an object for her: she looks at him steadily.

"This one", he says, pointing at another king of thugs, "hurt you, Miss Adler. I am in a position to hurt him."

She looks at him and hums, _Red sky at night, such a sailor's delight... Red sky at dawn, oh gypsy song's comin' on..._. He knows these very strings, the soft tautness they give when his bow leans into them just as perfectly _(did you sell),_ and he has to swallow past a pang of yearning, leaning forward to press a finger against her musical lips.

Holding the photograph between them until he gets another name.

She doesn't ask to keep the photograph. He doesn't tell her about the metal vat and the acid solution worth a king's ransom, that will strip the man of all three dimensions. They are headed already, each to their own crossing.

* * *

And so the trains, and so the men, one by one, in a journey that keeps doubling onto itself, year in year out, until a plane roars him over the sea, eyes strained for a peep of his native island. He texts Mycroft wryly ( _Nobody's home_ ), fingers itching over the question mark.

Anthea, green-eyed, lofty and amused, takes him straight to the Morgue where Molly shows them the final four bodies. Each dead man has a tale to tell and Sherlock gathers the last clues feverishly. He has been undercover too long. He wants the sun and dust of London; he wants to be on fire again; and, more than anything else, he wants another voice to speak his name. He sets Moran's arm, empty-handed at last, back along the man's torso and steps out into a waiting car.

"Sherlock," Mycroft says, and Sherlock is enfolded in his next of kin's hug, grounding him home at last.

"Endgame", he answers, stealing a glance at the car window. Gaunt, stubbly, red-rimmed - no wonder Molly kept the autopsy table between them. But Mycroft is already babbling about a designer's bathroom, an Oxford suit, a three course meal and an Embassy nicotine patch.

"And then, my dear boy?"

But he never answered Sherlock's text. Sherlock presses his forehead against the cool pane of glass, a magic lantern of sights and sounds, struggling to take in as many as he can. Mycroft is home; London is home. Why should home be anyone else?

"New Scotland Yard, of course", he says curtly.

* * *

Lestrade is every bit as blunt and boisterous as remembered. Sherlock finds the bluntness oddly comforting.

"Now don't look at the mess over here - this place has turned a complete pigsty in your absence. Overwork. I'm back to fags and Anderson's taken to hard-boiled mints. And so you say Moriarty's gone? Alleluiah and all that, but unexplained homicide is still Gift of the Month. Four of'em yesterday, and -"

But Sherlock is gazing at the office board. Lists, schedules, press cuttings, and, in the upper right corner, one photograph with a quaint splash of orange.

"Did you think we'd forgotten?" Lestrade asks softly and, before Sherlock can think of an answer, "Did you think  _any_  of us had forgotten?"

Sherlock walks to the board and unpins the photograph.

"He's home and waiting. Checking that blog of his, for all I know. Ever since he's made up his mind to post on Reichenbach, he's had a dozen offers a day. Flatshares, flatmates, whatnot." Lestrade spins on his heel and throws his office door open. "A Baker's dozen, we keep telling him. Off with you, lad. You know what they say about number thirteen."

* * *

He lets Mrs Hudson embrace him, both of them aware of her hand splayed on the old, old scar - her husband's parting gift to the young man who hunted him to his death.

Touch widens into a blur of other senses. There's the faint whiff of damp and polish, the reds and yellows of the stained window, Mrs Hudson's soft wail in his ear. In a moment, he will be wondering who made the telling dent in her wallpaper and why the jot of cologne on her earlobes. In another moment, he'll be jolting up the stairs.

Right now, she is hugging him and that is the long and short of wonder.

* * *

Steps behind the door, solidly even. When he can hear John's breath before it opens, Sherlock knows he's burning.  

There are three extra lines grazing John's forehead, two sideways and one across, and his temples have gone from ashen blond to sandy grey. But John it is, John in the flesh, the whole John and nothing but his John.

"Do come in", his John is saying politely. "I'm happy to see you back, Sherlock. Your brother texted that you were on your way."

A very flummoxed Sherlock steps into the flat. As far as he can see, it  _is_  the flat he left three years ago, warts and all, down to the gaps in the wall and the unmistakable laptop displayed on the table.

He's less certain about the flatmate.

"Ah yes, your laptop. Mycroft let me keep it, said you'd certainly deleted anything of public importance. I, ah, did try to research it. In case you'd have, you know, left me a clue. I'm afraid I never managed to crack your password. Bit shaming, that, but there you are."

Sherlock stares hard into the mild blue eyes. Perhaps he should have had that three-course meal after all - he is feeling more than a bit dizzy. "How could you not crack the password?" he snaps. "That's impossible. You chose it for me, that night before we left. The night we - I asked you to chose it." The dizziness is like a swell, rising to his eyes and he shuts them tight, holding to the table and his memories. "The password was - is – _let_him_live_."

The slap jolts his eyes open. "You!" John is roaring in a most impolite manner. "You, you,  _ah_ , you son of a bitch, it's really you... " and before Sherlock can vindicate Mummie, John is slamming into him with three years' compacted rage, and the table corner is giving Sherlock's loins a stern reminder of its angular nature.

"Me", Sherlock gasps back a moment before John's hand clamps down on his neck. His homecoming kiss is hard and thorough, an open invitation to flesh and spirit alike, and it leaves Sherlock expatiating in a dazed voice, "Me too, John. Me too."

"You too, yeah," John echoes. "You damnable, movable, uncontrollable git. Always you." One arm twined around Sherlock's waist, he's marching them to the couch. "You have a whale of a tale to tell me, you. And no lies, unless you don't want to kiss your flatshare goodbye."

This rings a sudden bell in Sherlock's short-term memory.

"Where's your laptop?" he asks, twisting himself around and out of the arm.

John looks as if about to add "incurable" to his previous list.

"In the kitchen. Why?"

Sherlock runs a bee-line to the kitchen and switches on John's laptop, logging himself onto his friend's blog. Lestrade, predictably enough, was way off the mark. There are  _fifty_  comments on John's last entry, all of them various embroideries on the "Come-and-live-with-me" thread. Sherlock spares them one withering look and deletes the lot.

"There" he says with a huff of satisfaction. "You've spent quite enough time on the Web."

John opens his mouth in protest, but Sherlock knows better than to engage into a little domestic after a three years' leave. Instead, he drags them back to the couch, pins John's hands to his side and puts his own mouth to its  _other_  clever use.

Tales can wait. Apologies can wait. But this is peace, and this cannot, will not wait.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
